Ten years ago, Outdoor Norway started with one goal: get more people into the mountains and rivers around Voss. In 2025 alone, the team guided 7,024 guests through rafting, mountain biking, kayaking, and multi-day trips across Fjord Norway. Getting there took a decade of work. Most of it happened off camera, building a team that could deliver on that promise, season after season.
A Team That Comes from Everywhere
Outdoor Norway is an international workplace. The team draws people from different countries, cultures, and continents, and that mix shapes how we work every day. Early starts on the river, long days on the trail, cold mornings loading kayaks onto the van before the sun clears the mountains: everyone on this team knows what that actually feels like.
Diversity does not sort itself out. Different communication styles, different expectations, and different ways of solving problems take real effort to align. New team members get support figuring out how the team operates and what to expect from each other. That goes both ways.
What the whole team shares, regardless of background, is the same focus: creating safe, memorable adventures for every guest who arrives in Voss.
Careers Built Over Seasons
Some guides stay one season. Others build a career here. Look at the current team, and both paths are visible.
Mohan has spent four summers guiding Grade IV and V rapids, sea kayaking, mountain biking, and multi-day tours. Anil and Anup, both from India, bring twelve and eleven years of river guiding experience, on rivers across India as well as in Austria and Canada. Finn, from the UK, has spent five years on the water and now mentors newer guides during the season. That kind of tenure does not happen by accident. It happens when people want to keep coming back.
Not every path runs through the river. Emee works in adventure sales and booking, and returned to the team after maternity leave, back in Voss and back to shaping the guest experience from the first booking onward. Franco, the company's founder, followed the longest arc of all. He built an international career as an adventure racer and whitewater athlete, arrived in Norway as a rafting guide in 2010, settled in Voss in 2011, and founded the company in 2016. His own path is proof that a season of guiding can turn into something much bigger, if someone wants to take it there.
Growth takes different shapes here, depending on the person doing the work.
What the Team Shares
Outdoor Norway believes every guest should feel confident trying something new, regardless of their starting point. A student and a CEO get the same welcome and the same encouragement to try something new. Local expertise matters just as much. The team relies on guides who know the Raundal River or the trails above Voss by feel, not just by map.
That standard holds an international team together day to day. A guide from Nepal, a guide from the UK, and a booking manager based in Voss are all working from the same understanding of what a good trip looks like and what it takes to run one safely.
A Decade of Milestones
A few moments mark how the company actually changed shape over ten years.
Outdoor Norway registered as a company in Voss on March 7, 2016, built around introducing river SUP to Norway as a commercial product. Two years later, the company brought the first full-suspension electric mountain bikes to Norway for rental and guided tours, a shift that meant new certifications for guides and a new activity to build a season around. By 2019, Outdoor Norway had become the only full-time operator on the Raundal River, running the Grade 3 whitewater rafting tour that is still a core product today.
The pandemic hit the whole industry hard. Outdoor Norway grew 12 percent through 2020 anyway, and welcomed more guests than the year before. Behind that number was a team that kept showing up through real uncertainty about whether the tours would run at all.
In 2024, the team moved into a new headquarters, the former Avisa Hordaland newspaper building on the shores of Vangsvatnet. Year-round operations, proper storage for gear, and space for a team that had grown to 15 people. Two years on, that team has grown to around 25.
Recruitment: Getting It Right
Outdoor Norway hires slowly on purpose. Skills matter, but a candidate also needs to want to work through a demanding outdoor season, alongside a small international team, without it wearing them down. Candidates meet several people on the team before any offer goes out, not just one manager running a single interview.
The best proof is how long people stay. Mohan has returned for four summers, while Anil, Anup, and Finn have been part of the team for more than two summers. People do not return that long to a job that does not fit.
As the team has grown, so have the systems supporting it behind the scenes, giving guides and office staff more time to focus on guests instead of paperwork.
Outdoor Norway's international culture is also shaped by Norway's working holiday visa programme. Young people from countries including Argentina, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand can apply to spend a season living and working in Norway if they're under 31, while Canadians are eligible up to age 35. Combined with seasonal recruitment, it has helped build a team that brings together guides and staff from around the world.
Ten Years In
Ten years in Voss is about more than tours and milestones. It's about the people who have built Outdoor Norway along the way. Guides return summer after summer, a booking manager came back after having a child, and a founder who once stood exactly where his guides stand now, wondering if any of this would actually work.
Interested in being part of what comes next? Explore career opportunities with Outdoor Norway.
